Scotty

This is my last reply to you. You are too snotty and unpleasant a person for me to want to have anything further to do with you. The Liberal plan includes a promise to restore the eligibility for old age security and guaranteed income supplement back to 65, a new seniors price index to make sure those benefits keep up with rising costs, a 10 per cent boost to the guaranteed supplement for single low-income seniors and a pledge not to cut pension income splitting for seniors. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-trudeau-retirement-security-cpp-1.3226897

Oh and let us not forget his promise to have more females in cabinet. Since women have never run in the same numbers as men there are always a lot more men than women in caucus. Twenty Seven percent of elected Liberals are women, but Justin has promised that half his cabinet will be female. Given the nature of cabinet making there are always some weak links but this one promises to have a lot of people who are simply placeholders due to having ovaries.

Trudeau has pledged to roll back changes to CPP to make the eligible pension age 65. That means he either increases payroll taxes, which harms jobs, or the countdown starts to when the CPP runs out of money. He's also pledged to increase the GIS by 10%. This is an unfunded program whose costs will only increase as the population ages. He's pledged further improvements to CPP which may or may not require mandatory extra contributions. And he's promised to rush right over and scoop up 25,000 refugees from that middle east mess and get them back here for Christmas, no matter what it costs, and no matter how little time that will give us to check them out.

Conservative, as the devil I know.

That's a strange question. You said Trudeau proved you wrong, and I asked how. Was the question offensive?

Did I say anything insulting, derogatory or offensive about smallc? I don't believe I did. The topic was not his reasons for voting Liberal but how Trudeau "proved me wrong"

Your belief that we have lost respect is not born out by any evidence. Did France lose respect in the global community when it outright banned the niqab?

By reading from whatever his script said?

I am not even speaking to what Harper does or says but other individuals in society, including those on this site, who should be able to discuss this issue without being subjected to labels. And all of this is part of one of the four topics which certain people feel may not be discussed, that being immigration.

Aren't there similar people in every party? And I'm in doubt about which policies they have which would be unworkable or unconstitutional. As i said in another topic, the four topics not permitted to be discussed are abortion, immigration, official bilingualism, and gay rights. Toss in death penalty if you like. I think there's only one of those subjects where one could say the SC would probably intervene, that being gay rights. I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that these 'far right' conservatives you speak of are social conservatives and the opinions you think the party needs to supress are in those categories...

All right, how about this then? If you do physical labour, as opposed to sitting at a desk or computer or counter, you're probably working class

How about an honest answer then?

That's completely irrelevent. I'm not commenting on why the Conservatives chose to make an issue of the niqab, and agree it was at least in part politically motivated. But I've read a number of columns opposing the niqab and they have very good reasons, most of them having to do with a a liberal belief in what our society should stand for. They are entitled to those opinions without being derided as evil or morally inferior. They are placing more importance on the need of society not to accomodate something which, to them, symbolizes oppression towards women, than to the right of a woman to wear the niqab. That might be a different opnion than yours but it is no less valid and no less moral. You have no lock on what is and is not an acceptable opinion.

I am not interested in replaying the discussion about the niqab on this topic. I was merely pointing out for the sake of political discourse that assuming your intelocutor's position comes from some kind of morally deficient position leads to nothing more than insults and smears.

Speaking as someone who remembers how divisive earlier elections were I think you are mistaken about him introducing anything new. The difference being that overall political manners have gotten progressively worse over the years to the point nearly anything goes.

His allegation is that the local preference was encouraged by bribes, uhm, I mean, donations to the Liberal party from the winning bidders.

I'm assuming you're referring to the niqab? That is not what I consider 'dirty' politics. Dirty politics is smearing your opponent unfairly. The niqab issue is simply an issue the Tories took a stand on and which the other parties disagree on. I think you consider it dirty because it's an outgrowth of one of the four major social topics that many people feel should never be discussed, because, I think, they feel the case is closed, and no one is allowed to open it up to consider alternatives. That, of course, is immigration. But there is nothing dirty about the niqab debate except that one side believes that questioning it is an outrageous finger pointing at a minority group and should not be tolerated. Interestingly, most on the other side are also operating from a perspective of protecting individual rights in that the niqab represents, to them, a deeply unsettling and misogynistic representation of the belief that women are lesser persons and should, by culture or force, hide their faces and remain anonymous so as to not incite male lust. What you fail to consider is that most on both sides are working out of their belief in what is needed to protect a secular, open society. There is no reason to demonize the other side for this even if you believe them mistaken.

Evidence of Harper having cheated in the last three elections seems vanishingly rare. I think you are taking a couple of individual instances such as the guy who outstripped his spending limits, and the guy who did that robocall stuff and blaming that on Harper. This even though there is no evidence such things were done in an organized, across the country basis as if it were being directed from above, and no evidence it had any impact even on local elections, let alone the national one.

There isn't any evidence to support that, other than taking a few instances of individuals getting overzealous, and then exagerating them and using them to tar entire parties. I've asked for an example and you declined to provide one.

What is your reasoning? I don't remember any big scary features of it. Trudeau was being depicted as not read. That's not exactly a big, dirty smear. His policies were often inaptly described, but that's a normal feature of elections on all sides. I haven't heard Mulcair being described in any particularly nasty way. The opposition have complained about Harper's controlling personality as PM, which is fair, rather than insulting or dirty. I haven't seen anything which compares to the ads for 'soldiers in our streets, with guns' or the ones which showed Chretien's disfigurement.

It was an honest question. I want to know what people regard as crazy as far as MPs go.

That attitude is kind of what I'm talking about. Do you seriously think politicians in Canada want to take us back to some kind of violent, pre civilization time? Why? Isn't it possible that what you find 'disgusting' is simply a difference of opinions? Name a disgusting action of a political party in this election - without advocating for or against in order to avoid thread drift. I do not wish to refight on this topic what is being fought over on others.

I'm not speaking of personal morality. I'm speaking of attaching a moral rider to every policy or bill so that if you support it you're 'good' and if you oppose it you're 'bad'. And this regardless of whether the policy or program or bill is social or economic in nature. For example, almost any tax change or economic policy will help some at the expense of others. But sometimes, oftentimes, this can't be helped. As an example, as someone recently pointed out, the age of pension eligibility for cpp being pushed back.

When some people decided that rational decisions must contain a moral dimension.

But these were things which simply had to be done. There was no alternative with an aging population. We can't continue to have people working for forty years and then living off society for another forty or fifty. It's not like Harper did it because he hates old people and wanted to hurt them. This is where discourse falls apart. When we suggest a policy chosen is done out of some sort of mean-spirited or evil intent.